Page 10 of Fall or Nothing

At some point tonight, he’d kidnapped her, but Knox found them and saved her. Thank God. I owed that man an enormous hug after he recovered from the surgery.

How could this be our lives right now? Hadn’t my sisters and I endured enough over the years?

After the surgery, the doctor had urged us to go home and get some rest and return tomorrow to see Knox. Of course, Daisy refused to leave, and she practically shoved us out the door.

That was her, taking on all the weight of it so we wouldn’t have to. Eventually, Colt took Ivy to their cabin at the ODRR to rest for the night. Poppy and I left, too.

I pulled into the driveway and shook Poppy’s knee to wake up. “We’re here. Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me?”

She stretched and yawned. “My friends are expecting me. Before we head back to campus tomorrow, they’ll drop me by the hospital to see Knox first and check on Daisy.”

“They’ll be okay, you know? They have to be, now that she’s realized what he means to her.” We squeezed hands, and she got out.

Then it was just me, left with my thoughts as I headed toward town. My headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the narrow stretch ahead of me. Driving in a daze, I jolted and slowed when a shape came into view on the side of the road. A deer? A bear?

No—a human walking.

“What in the world?” My brows pulled together as the figure came into clearer focus.

I chuckled at first—poor soul—until my headlightsfully caught him. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing nothing but tight white Calvin boxers and boots.

My mouth went dry. The man had absolutely no business lookingthatgood half-naked on a frosty Montana road.

He stuck his thumb out. I shook my head. No way would I pick up a stranger, no matter how perfect an ass he had. But my headlights caught his face just as I passed him, recognition hitting me instantly.

“Carter?” I hit the brakes hard, my pulse kicking up.

Tonight hadn’t finished surprising me yet. The same man who’d made my stomach flutter with plant puns and then vanished like smoke was now standing vulnerable on the roadside. Anger and concern tangled up inside me, but so did something intriguing I couldn’t name yet.

I threw my door open and climbed out. “You have got to be kidding me. What the hell happened to you?” My eyes made one very involuntary sweep from his face to his boots. I was not proud of the stop in the middle, where I quickly counted a six-pack.

“S-s-age…?” His teeth were chattering too hard for a coherent answer. Up close, his skin had gone past cold dangerously to blue, and actually alarmed me. His arms hugged tight to his chest like he could keep the warmth in through sheer stubbornness.

“Get in the car.” I hooked my hand around the thick part of his bicep, his skin like ice.

I guided him to the passenger side and folded him in, which was challenging because he was about a foot taller than my vehicle was built for. I shrugged off my coat and dropped it over his lap like a blanket. It was three sizes toobig on me, which meant on him it didn’t cover entirely, but it was all I had.

I climbed back behind the wheel and pulled onto the road, cranking the heat.

For a mile or two, neither of us spoke. The heater roared. His chattering teeth slowed. He thawed out beside me in the small, warm space as I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead.

“Are you okay?” I finally managed. “Do you need a doctor?”

“I’ll be fine.” His voice was back, a little rough around the edges. He leaned against the headrest and did his best impression of casual.

“Mind telling me what happened to you?”

“It was, uh, just… with some of the ranch guys. An initiation thing. They wanted to take the new guy out for a proper drink. We went to a biker bar.”

I let that sit for a moment. “A biker bar?”

“Yeah, but we got into a bit of a disagreement with some locals. The next thing I know, I’m being left on the side of the road and they’ve taken my phone, my wallet, everything.” He shifted, and I caught the small wince he tried to swallow. Ribs, probably. “Things escalated quickly.”

“You should report this to the police.”

“No!” He huffed a quiet laugh that didn’t quite convince me. “No, really, t’s nothing. The bikers didn’t like my accent or my face, hard to say.”

“Hm.” I flicked a look at him and then back at the road. Something about the story didn’t sit right. “And the ranch hands you arrived with? They just left you out there?”